SEO. Three little letters that we hear all the time, but what do they stand for and why do some people make it so confusing to the consumer?
SEO simply stands for Search Engine Optimization. Of course this pertains to websites and the content of them. Lets say you want to do a search about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. You go to Google and type it in, and then, as if by magic, a whole host of websites appear in a list. This is Google linking you and your request for information with the websites that are the most relevant and the most authoritative on the subject.
Perhaps you want to narrow your search, and you can simply do that by changing what you are asking for. Maybe ‘who assassinated Abraham Lincoln?’ will give you websites with more specific information that you can then visit to find your answers.
So how does it work? SEO works to improve search engine rankings, giving higher rankings to those sites that are most relevant. If you have a website and it ranks in Google, that means that first you are doing a great job with your site and second, other web pages link to yours. As they promote authority pages (those that appear on the first page) your site should be full of things that people will find useful.
When you are building a site your main focus should be getting the most people to visit it from day one. This is achieved by using words and phrases in your site that most people will use when they are conducting a search. As soon as those words are typed in, your site, and it’s optimization can appear right at or near the top of the list and we all know that that’s where we head, because after all who goes to sites listed on page 4 or 5 of a Google search?
Great content on a site shows interest, both from the person who built it and the people who populate it with content and those looking for information each time they head to Google. If you are a website builder, you know this, but if you are a person searching for answers it quickly becomes apparent too. No one wants to wade through website after website of bad information before they find what they are looking for, instead we all want to type in our question or inquiry and then be redirected to where we need to be.
